Visualizing social photos on a Hasse diagram for eliciting relations and indexing new photos

Social photos, which are taken during family events or parties, represent individuals or groups of people. We show in this paper how a Hasse diagram is an efficient visualization strategy for eliciting different groups and navigating through them. However, we do not limit this strategy to these traditional uses. Instead we show how it can also be used for assisting in indexing new photos. Indexing consists of identifying the event and people in photos. It is an integral phase that takes place before searching and sharing. In our method we use existing indexed photos to index new photos. This is performed through a manual drag and drop procedure followed by a content fusion process that we call 'propagation'. At the core of this process is the necessity to organize and visualize the photos that will be used for indexing in a manner that is easily recognizable and accessible by the user. In this respect we make use of an Object Galois Sub-Hierarchy and display it using a Hasse diagram. The need for an incremental display that maintains the user's mental map also leads us to propose a novel way of building the Hasse diagram. To validate the approach, we present some tests conducted with a sample of users that confirm the interest of this organization, visualization and indexation approach. Finally, we conclude by considering scalability, the possibility to extract social networks and automatically create personalised albums.